If Grizzlies third-year guard O.J. Mayo has learned anything this basketball season, it's about staying in the moment.

You can talk all you want about the laundry list of things that went wrong for Mayo this year, and they've all been reviewed here before. From losing his starting job, to a fight with teammate Tony Allen on the team plane over a card game, to the 10-game suspension for unknowingly taking a substance banned by the NBA, to almost getting traded, he's the team's adversity poster boy.

But through all the downers, Mayo knew this truth: The one element that has been consistent and pure through all his troubles is the joy and satisfaction he gets from playing the game.

"It wasn't a cakewalk to get to the NBA," Mayo said. "Nothing has been easy in my life. I've just kept working and working this year. With the support I received from my teammates with the BEST locker room, that's all I can do; that's what keeps me going."

So when the Grizzlies trailed Oklahoma City by 11 points with 7:43 left in Saturday's Game Three of the Western Conference semifinal series, the least panicked Griz on the FedExForum court was Mayo.

Why? Because the guy has a doctorate in lessons learned from adversity. He knows the one thing he can control is the game.

Well, the game and Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook.

In the final 12:43 -- that's the last 7:43 of regulation and the five-minute overtime -- Mayo held the enormously talented and largely egotistical Westbrook to four points on 1-of-5 shooting as the Grizzlies came back for an improbable 101-93 overtime victory.

Athletically, the Grizzlies don't have a guard who can match Westbrook once he gets in the lane, plants his foot and gets airborne. He has world-class hops.

Westbrook, though, has a streaky outside shot. It might be his only weakness besides the fact he thinks he should get every foul call and often gets beat downcourt while lagging back to stare down officials who really aren't interested in his drama.

So when he started regularly dropping long-range shots on tired and bruised Griz point guard Mike Conley, who was nailed going around almost every high screen, Westbrook couldn't help himself.

He had to let all of FedExForum know. After one 3-pointer, he screamed "Pow" and pointed his fingers down like he was holstering his pistol. On another made shot, he kept up his follow-through and struck a pose, sort of like the Wesley Snipes character in the movie "White Men Can't Jump."

In short, Westbrook, who finished with 23 points, was having a large time, until Griz coach Lionel Hollins put Sheriff Mayo on him.

Mayo has never been accused of being an exceptional defensive player. But Hollins already knew Mayo was dialed in this afternoon, on his way to 18 points against a team that Mayo scored 30 against in one game last season when he was still a starter.

There's also the fact Mayo, a former USC standout, and Westbrook, a former UCLA star, have a history that began as a friendly, fierce Los Angeles crosstown rivalry.

"We were in the same draft, so I paid a lot of attention to him," said Mayo, who also grabbed six rebounds, dealt four assists, collected two steals and blocked two shots. "During the summer, we played pickup ball every day. I guarded him and he guarded me.

"He's gotten better and better and better. He's become an all-star in this league. I just wanted to be more physical and make it tough on him."

Mayo certainly did that. He banged his way around the screens that stopped Conley. When Westbrook spun one way, Mayo was waiting for him. He didn't get very many clean looks.

At the end of the impossible victory, in a jubilant Griz locker room full of tough, gritty players, they confirmed to a man what power forward Zach Randolph rasped, his words halting ever so slightly because of emotion.

"That kid has had such a tough year," Randolph said, pausing and shaking his head. "But he stuck with it. He'd come in the gym late at night, shoot, doing the little things to get better. That's what the NBA is all about.